


A Stillness

by Aria_Masterson1153



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: HE HAS FEELINGS HURRAH!, Jon's POV, Jon's also a ghost, Jonny is sensitive, M/M, Mention of Major Character death (Jon's a fucking ghost), Mentions of non-fatal car accidents, this is pure feel-good cheesiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-07-15
Packaged: 2018-07-24 04:51:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7494486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aria_Masterson1153/pseuds/Aria_Masterson1153
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><br/>My body was still as insubstantial as it had been before this nightmare. It floated, unaffected by the drag and pull of the angry current. This time things were different, although the dark, twisting scene looked almost the same as it did in each of my horrible dreams.<br/> <br/><i>Almost.</i><br/><br/>Because this time I wasn’t the one who was drowning.<br/> <br/><i><b>He was.</b></i><br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	A Stillness

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  Hey Everyone!  
>   
> This one's a bit different from my other works, seeing as it's in 1st person POV. I had an urge to try it out, let me know how you like it!  
>   
> Also, this characterization of Jonny may be a bit different from others, seeing as he's a lot more emotional, but just keep in mind he's been dead for a long time without any sort of human contact, so obviously he's a bit desperate!! :P  
>   
> A big thanks to Maggie and Sam for cheerleading this fic, which would have been collecting dust on my hard drive if not for them!  
> 

  
It was the same as always, but different from the first time.  
  
It felt as if my sternum was a door into which someone had roughly shoved a key and twisted. The door- _my lungs_ -wanted to open, wanted to stop fighting against the twist of the key. That primitive part of my brain, the one designed for survival, wanted me to breathe. But a louder part of my brain was also fighting any urge that might let the water rush in.  
  
The black water seized and scrambled and found purchase anywhere it could. I kept my lips pressed together and my eyes shut tight, though I desperately needed to escape this nightmare. Yet the water still entered my mouth and my nose in little seeps. Even my eyes and ears couldn’t hold it back. The water wrapped around my arms and legs like shifting fabric, tugging and pulling my body in all directions. I was buried under layers and layers of slippery, twisting fabric, and I wasn’t going to claw my way free.  
  
I’d struggled too long, fought too hard, and now my body was weakening from the lack of oxygen. The flail of my arms toward what I assumed was the surface became less exaggerated, as if the invisible fabric around them had thickened. I literally shook my head against the urge to breathe. I shouted _No!_ in my head. _No!_  
  
But instinct is a slippery thing too; ultimate and untrickable.  
  
My mouth opened and I breathed.  
  
And as I always did, except for the first time I experienced this nightmare, I woke up.  
  
My eyes remained closed and I continued to gasp. This time, my gasps brought hysterical gulps of air, but not the blackish water that had flooded my lungs and stopped my heart during that first nightmare.  
  
Now the air was useless, purposeless in my dead lungs. I nonetheless felt a dull joy at its presence: although my heart no longer beat, the air meant I was no longer drowning.  
  
Still, I felt a little silly for being afraid. After all, it’s not like you can die twice.  
  
_And I was already dead; that much was certain._  
  
It had taken me a while to accept the fact, perhaps years; time became a very uncertain thing in death. Years, of wandering, confused and distracted by every sight and sound. Screaming at pedestrians, begging them to help me understand why I was so lost or even just to acknowledge my presence. I could see myself- bare feet, navy suit, crew cut- but others couldn’t. And I never saw another person like myself, someone dead, so there was really no point of comparison.  
  
The nightmares were what made me finally see, and accept, the truth.  
  
At first, nothing in my wandering existence brought back memories of my life, nothing but the elusive familiarity of the woods and roads I wandered.  
  
_But then the nightmares began._  
  
I suddenly and without warning would fall into periods of unconsciousness. During them I would drown again. Only after the first few nightmares did I see them for what they were: memories of my violent death.  
  
So the memories of my death had returned. Yet only a few memories of my life came with them: my first name- _Jonathan_ -but not my last; my age at death- _nineteen_ -but not my date of birth; and of course, the fact that I’d apparently thrown myself off a bridge into the storm-flooded river below. But not the reason why.  
  
Though I couldn’t remember my life and what I’d learned in it, I still had some vague recollections of religious dogma. The few tenets I remembered; however, certainly hadn’t accounted for this particular kind of afterlife. The wooded, dusty hills of southeastern Chicago weren’t my idea of heaven, nor were the constant, narcoleptic revisits to the scene of my drowning.  
  
The word “purgatory” would come to mind after I woke from each nightmare. I would play out my horrific little scene and then I would wake up, gulping and sobbing tearlessly, in the exact same place each time. It wouldn’t matter where I’d been wandering when I went unconscious- an abandoned railway track, a thick grove of pines, a half- empty diner- my destination was always the same. And each time the nightmare ended, I would wake in a field. It was always daylight, and I always surrounded by row upon row of headstones. A cemetery. Probably mine.  
  
I never waited around to find out.  
  
I could have searched for my headstone maybe. Could have learned more about myself; about my death. Instead, I’d pull myself up from the weeds and dash for the iron gate enclosing the field, running as fast as my nonexistent legs would carry me.  
  
And so it was with my existence: a montage of aimless wanderings, an occasional word spoken to an unhearing stranger, and then the nightmares and subsequent hasty escapes from my waking place.  
  
_Until this nightmare._  
  
This nightmare had started the same. And, just as it always did, it ended with a terrifying awakening. But this time when I finally opened my eyes, I didn’t see the sunlight of a neglected cemetery. I saw only black.  
  
The unexpected darkness brought back the terror, the frantic gasping. Especially since, after what would have been only one beat of my still heart, I recognized my location.  
  
I was floating in the river again.  
  
My renewed gulps; however, didn’t drag in muddy water that surrounded me. My body was still and insubstantial as it had been before this nightmare. It floated, unaffected by the drag and pull of the angry water. This time things looked almost the same as it did in each of my horrible dreams.  
  
_Almost_.  
  
Because this time I wasn’t the one drowning.  
  
_He was._  
  


*****&*****&*****

My first impression of the scene was wrong. The water wasn’t entirely black. Faint light shimmered above the surface- moonlight, maybe; it was too grayish to be sunlight. Below me two muted yellow beams seemed to rise from the depths of the river.

No, not rise. The beams pointed upward, but they were retreating. I spared a quick glance at them. They came from a huge, dark shape just above me. The shape- a car, its headlights beaming into the darkness- floated downward with an eerie slowness.

I shook my head. I didn’t really care about the car, my attention was riveted on the boy illuminated in its headlights.

His body had shaped itself into a kind of _X_ , arms floating limply upward and sneakered feet dangling. His head hung down, but I could tell his eyes were closed.

This boy didn’t flail or struggle, and I had a sudden, sickening realization. This boy was unconscious. Not the kind of unconscious that torments the dead with nightmares, but the kind that kills the living.

If he didn’t wake up, this boy was going to drown.

Without another thought, I swam to him as fast as I could. When I reached him, I could see his face fully. He was young, no older than I was when I died. His face looked peaceful in its stillness. He was strikingly handsome. I could see that, even under the water. His blonde hair, darkened by the water, floated about his head almost lazily, considering the current. An involuntary and silly image sprang to mind: his outspread arms resembled wings. Useless wings, at that. I wondered, almost idly, whether my arms had resembled his when I died.

My thoughts, then, were as sudden as they were fierce. This boy couldn’t die. I couldn’t watch him die. Not here, not like this.

I began to grasp at him, frantically trying to pull at his clothes and his limbs. To drag him to the surface. I tugged at his long-sleeved shirt and his jeans, even at his dark hair.

I pulled and pulled, but of course nothing happened. My stupid, dead hands couldn’t touch him, couldn’t save him. It was like struggling in the water on the night of my death- not a damn thing that I did would have any effect on the outcome. I was impotent, ineffective, and never more aware of the fact that I was.

Soon I started screaming in his face and pressed both my hands against his chest. As we sank deeper into the river, I became acutely aware of something: the sound of his slowing heartbeat.

As far as I knew, I possessed no supernatural sense whatsoever. Although some of my human sense had survived my death- my sight and hearing, obviously- I could no longer smell, taste, or feel anything in the living world. My remaining senses hadn’t dulled, but they certainly hadn’t improved, either.

So the sound of his heartbeat shocked me. I shouldn’t have heard it so well, but I did. Even with a foot of water between us and with my _no-better-than-human_ hearing, I could hear his heartbeat as clearly as if I’d pressed a stethoscope to his chest.

I wondered whether this had something to do with death. With _being_ dead. Perhaps the dead could hear one of our own approaching, racing towards us. Or slowing towards us, in his case.

The boy and I continued to sink; and as we did so, his fragile heart beat unevenly toward its end. Each thud came slower than the one before it, until finally-

His heart stuttered once. Twice. And then I couldn’t hear it anymore. A tiny bubble escaped the corner of his lips and floated upward.

I screamed. I screamed as I did in the first flush of death, angry and humiliated at my own lack of power. I screamed and slapped my useless hands against his chest.

At that moment his eyes opened.

He looked to the left and to the right, taking in his surroundings. Then he looked at me. He looked right into my eyes.

I froze. Could he... _see_ me?

He smiled, and then suddenly reached out his hand to place it upon my cheek. I felt his skin, warm on mine. Without thinking, I put my hand over his. His smile widened when I touched him.

He _did_ see me.

He saw me, he saw me, he saw me.

My still, unbeating heart soared. And then so did his.

His heart-the one I’d just heard dying- stuttered, and stuttered again. The renewed beat sounded slow and uneven at first, but quickly it began to steady itself.

He looked down at his chest and back up at me, eyebrows arched in surprise at the sound coming from within him.

Then he coughed. The motion shook his whole body and sent bubbles flying out of his mouth.

He began to kick and flail. As he flailed, I realized I could no longer hear his heart. It was silent, at least to me. Yet he was thrashing about, fighting against the dark water. He continued to cough violently as his lungs spasmed back to life. Through the churning water, I could see his expression. He looked angry, terrified, and desperate.

I recognized that look. I had once _felt_ that look. This boy was alive. He was alive, and didn’t want to die.

“Swim!” I yelled at him suddenly. “Up! Out!”

He didn’t look at me, but he began to scissor his legs and grab at the water above his head as if he were climbing out of a pit. Unlike my efforts on the night of my death, however, his struggles worked. His lanky limbs propelled him toward the surface of the water.

I’d never felt a wave of relief like this. Not in a million nightmare- wakings. Not in a million of those gasps that proved I was no longer drowning.

“Up!” I screamed again, this time with joy.

He continued to claw his way up, not once looking back at me or the sound of my voice as I followed him effortlessly. Perhaps to him I was once again different, dead. For the moment, I couldn’t have cared less. He would live. He couldn’t die in this cold, wet pit like I had. That was more than enough.

It felt like an eternity until he broke the surface of the river, but he did. In the night air, he choked and sputtered and gasped, flapping his arms against the water as if he were trying to fly away from it.

I floated beside him, entirely unaffected by the current or the churning his movements had created. When he sucked in a huge breath of air, I actually laughed aloud and clapped my hands together. Then, I clapped my hands over my mouth. I’d never laughed. Not once since my death.

“Patrick! Patrick!”

The unfamiliar voice startled me. Someone had called out across the river to us. Well, to the boy anyway. I turned away from him, almost unwillingly, and saw a cluster of figures on the riverbank behind us.

“Patrick!” a girl’s voice screamed. “Oh, Jesus, Patrick, please! Someone help him!”

I turned to the boy, who was still coughing and flailing.

“Patrick?” I asked. “Are you Patrick?”

He didn’t answer.

“Well, Patrick or not Patrick, I know you’re tired. God knows I know. I know you probably can’t hear me, either. But you’ve got to swim toward those voices. Do you understand?”

For a second he didn’t react. Then, with painfully slowness, he began to move his arms. The movements didn’t exactly qualify as swimming, but they were enough to start pushing his body through the water.

As he got closer, the screams from the shore grew louder. In them I could almost make out a rational thread of conversation concerning the plan to pull him out of the river.

But really, I wasn’t listening to the people on the shore. I was watching the boy swim, closer than I’d ever watched anything in my existence. I found myself praying for the first time since my death. Praying that he made it safely to the shore; praying that he didn’t give up and let the current take him.

“Please,” I whispered as I followed him. “Please, let him make it.”

This boy proved much stronger than I ever had. For several more agonizing minutes, he fought his way through the current. Finally, he was close enough so that someone was able to grab his arm and half swim, half drag him to shore.

Cries of both joy and fear rose up from the crowd that had gathered on the grass embankment and the bridge above us. A man, the one who had pulled the boy from the water, stretched the boy out upon the muddy red riverbank. As I rose out of the water and walked on to the shore, I could see the man flutter his hands over the boy’s body, checking for some sign of life.

The boy instantly rolled over, and began to vomit water. Audible sighs of relief rose up from the crowd. Their faces were illuminated by headlights from the cars parked in a jumble on the grass as well as on the bridge. The onlookers’ expressions varied from tense to excited to scared.

“Patrick. Patrick,” they called like a chorus.

They all seemed to know his name.

It was then that I noticed the multicoloured flash of lights coming from the emergency vehicles that had formed their own sort of crowd behind the bystanders on the bridge. Within what seemed like only seconds, two uniformed paramedics had made their way down the embankment and knelt beside the boy, doing their own, more effective sort of fluttering over him. Within less than a minute after that, the boy- _my_ boy, if I was honest in my suddenly possessive thoughts- was placed on a gurney and hoisted across the bank, then up toward an ambulance. The crowd surged forward with the paramedics, and I lost sight of him.

That should have been the end of the ordeal. Yet I couldn’t stand still. I couldn’t watch strangers take away the only living person to see me. My boy. My Patrick.

Determined, I pushed through the crowd. They couldn’t see or feel me, of course, but I still had to fight to find a clear path.

By some miracle I made it through. I shoved in between two figures and suddenly found myself at the side of the gurney just as the paramedics began to raise its wheels so they could slide it and its passenger into the ambulance.

I leaned over the boy. He looked pale in the moonlight m his face gaunt and drawn. For some reason I had to hold back a sob.

“Patrick,” I croaked, unsure of what to do. Unsure of everything.

He opened his eyes then. Cerulean coloured eyes- that were too dark to be identified at night. He looked at me and held my gaze in the moment before the paramedics moved him out of my sight, possibly forever.

“Pat,” he forced out, his voice rough from the river water. “Call me Pat.”

Then the gurney was shoved into the ambulance, the doors slammed shut, and he was gone.

I stood there on the riverbank, motionless. Some of the onlookers remained after the departure of the ambulance, milling around to discuss what I could only assume was the near tragedy. I barely noticed when the last member of the crowd left and the last set of headlights disappeared into the darkness of the night. I wasn’t really paying enough attention to hear or see anything going on around me.

What I saw instead were his eyes, looking straight into mine. What I heard was his voice...talking to me? Yes, I’m sure he’d been talking to me. No one had asked him to identify himself as they loaded him into the ambulance. He’d had no reason to give his name to anyone but me. Most of the crowd seemed to know him. Maybe they’d known him all his life. Maybe they’d sensed, as I had, how important he was.

Of course I knew his importance now. I knew it deep in my suddenly very awake core. I know nothing about him-not his age, his last name, the way his voice would sound if it spoke my name. But I knew things had changed for me.

_They had changed forever._

*****&*****&*****

Two days passed.

Their passage, although probably not remarkable to the living, was extraordinary for me. I’d never really had a reason to count the passing days. The sun’s rising and setting had no effect on me except to obscure my vision at night. I didn’t need sleep, and my lack of company in the daylight didn’t change at sunset. When the nightmares begun- wrenching me from wakefulness into unconscious terror and then unfamiliar daylight- I’d lost the will to mark time altogether.

Until now.

Now I couldn’t stop counting each lonely moment as it passed.

On the first night, while I watched the ambulance drive away, I’d thought fleetingly of following it on foot. But I’d ultimately rejected the idea. Even though I could travel instantly through space and time in my nightmares, I hadn’t discovered a way to do so while awake. I still moved at a human pace, and I could probably walk for years before I found the hospital where the ambulance had taken the boy.

It hadn’t occurred to me until after the last car had left the riverbank that I could’ve snuck into an empty backseat, maybe gone with the driver to the hospital...and then what? The idea of stowing away with a living stranger on the slim possibility that I would end up at a hospital, wandering lost through its corridors in search of another stranger- well, I felt silly and irrational just imagining it.

Of course, milling around the scene of my death didn’t seem very rational, either.

From the bank of the river, I’d watched as the police barricaded the gap in the bridge above me. I’d looked on as a wrecking crew, completely oblivious to their audience of one, towed the boy’s sodden car from the water. While these activities took place, I hardly questioned my desire to stay here- really, who wouldn’t be interested in such things?

But after the activity had ended, each subsequent moment I’d spent at this site made me feel more and more foolish.

For a while I’d tried to justify my need to linger. I told myself that I just needed some time to reorganize my thought before I began wandering aimlessly again.

I didn’t _want_ to wander aimlessly anymore. I wanted to wander with a specific aim. I wanted to wander to _someone_.

Someone who had nearly died (or actually died; I couldn’t be sure) in this river. Someone who, in doing so, had changed me irrevocably.

There were signs, other than my unwillingness to leave, that a change had taken place. First, there were what I came to think of as “flashes”. I would be walking through the woods beside the river, or along the bank, and a flash would happen. An image- bright and colourful, and full of smell and taste- would flash across my mind and then disappear as fast as it had arrived.

Like my nightmares, the flashes occurred unexpectedly. But instead of terror and pain, they brought something infinitely more appealing: what I could only assume were memories of my life before death.

Nothing significant had appeared yet: a black ribbon fluttering in the wind; the sound of a tire squealing on pavement; the earthy smell of a spring storm. No people, no names, no fleshed-out scenes to give me some clue as to who I was or why I’d died. Nor did I really experiences tastes and smells. The things that occurred in the flashes were more like ghosts of those sensations. But they were enough.

However little I saw, I became more and more certain that these images were _mine_. My memories from life, breaking free of the fog that death had wrapped around my mind.

And it was because of him. Because of his eyes on mine. Because of his hand upon my cheek, placed there as naturally and easily as it would have been had we been made of the same stuff. Skin, blood, bone. Breathing, seeing, touching.

The mere memory of his skin made me tingle. But not some fleeting, imaginary tingle- this was a _sensation_. An actual, physical sensation. And the next, most miraculous, change in my new existence.

The first time I’d felt something had occurred on the night of my accident. While I stood on the riverbank watching the lights of the ambulance fade, I’d become aware of an odd, pins-and-needles sensation in the soles of my feet. I stared down at them, confused and afraid. Suddenly, I could feel the mud between my toes and the tickling of the dry grass upon my bare feet. Then, just as abruptly as it had begun, the sensation had ended.

The event had stunned me, to say the least. For so long I’d been desperate for a waking, physical sensation. I’d wanted to feel something, anything. Yet I could place my hand on an object, press myself against it, and it would never matter. I felt nothing. Nothing but a dull pressure that prevented me from going further.

My afterlife had proven all the supernatural stereotypes wrong. I couldn’t walk through walls or float amorphously from room to room. The living people who came close to me didn’t walk through my body but instead seemed to move unthinkingly around me, as though I were just an obstacle in their path.

The only thing I could feel, could affect, was myself. I could touch my hair, my suit, my own skin. After a while this exception provided me no comfort. Actually, it became more of a big, hideous joke: I was trapped in a prison of one. It was as if I existed in my own little dimension, unseen and unheard by others, but maddeningly aware of my surroundings.

I have no words to describe the way that made me feel: not only invisible, but also without the power of smell, taste, even touch. Then, how to describe the way I felt when I realized my only physical sensations occurred in the nightmares through which I re-experienced my death?

Or, alternatively, how to describe the touch of a hand on my cheek after so long?

Not only was the touch itself extraordinary, but it had also opened some sort of floodgate of sensations.

In the two days following the accident, and at the strangest moments, I would feel things from the living world. Such as the rough bark of the blackjack oak tree against which I leaned, or a tiny drop of rain when a brief shower had passed over the river. These feelings came and went quickly, outside of my control.

Yet I found I could control one of them: the little thrill in my veins each time I thought of his skin. This thrill bore a haunting similarity to a quickened pulse in my wrists and neck, so I sought ways to replicate it as often as I could.

I was thinking of his skin again when another flash occurred. Without warning, a scent overwhelmed me, capturing me completely. I froze where I stood, smelling a cluster of late-summer blackberries that clung to a bramble along the tree line. I leaned closer to them, breathing in their smell, tart and overripe under the noonday sun. Although the scent soon vanished and the numbness began to creep back over me, I laughed aloud.

This was the second laugh of my afterlife, and I wanted more of them. Without another thought, I dashed up the steep, grassy embankment to the bridge.

_Bounding tall hills in a single breath. Or no breath at all! Super Dead Boy!_ I laughed again, feeling giddy as I arrived at the top of the hill and began to stride across the grass.

When I crossed the shoulder to the road, however, I froze, one bare foot on the pavement and one on the grass, arms out in an imitation of a trapeze artist.

_Memorial Bridge Road._

The words whispered like a threat in my mind, and I immediately had an urgent desire to get away from this place. I could feel a gnawing at the back of my mind, an itch creeping up and down my skin.

Did I sense the stirrings of another nightmare? No, this felt like an entirely different kind of foreboding, one I’d never before experienced.

I shook my head. I was being ridiculous. After all, I was dead. What could be scarier than me?

I forced one foot off the grass and the other farther onto the pavement. My legs moved almost involuntarily, and each step along the shoulder of the road sent unpleasant tingles up my spine.

_This is stupid,_ I thought. I straightened my back. I refused to skulk on the side of the road like a dog with its tail between its legs.

“Move it,” I commanded myself aloud. I strode forward with purpose, albeit still a little stiffly. Each step unnerved me further, but I didn’t slow until I made it almost halfway across the bridge.

I only stopped when I reached the jagged gap in the waist-high metal railing to my right. Yellow police tape and a few wooden sawhorses stood between the gap and the road, ready and willing to keep absolutely nothing from plummeting off the bridge. The torn railing hung out over the edge of the bridge on both sides of the gap, swaying slightly in the breeze. His- Pat’s- car had torn a hole at least six feet wide into the railing before crashing into the river.

I shivered at the very idea of the crash as well as from the sound coming from the sound of his name in my head. Wrapping my arms around my body, I spared a timid glance at the ground. Streaks of black rubber criss-crossed the pavement where the tires had made a futile attempt to keep him from going over the edge.

It was then I heard the scream, a terrible, pealing sound that shrieked from behind me.

I actually jumped up in the air. An expletive, one I didn’t even know I knew, flew out of my mouth as I turned to face the sound.

Only then did I see that the horrible noise hadn’t been a scream after all. It had been the sound of tires squealing to a sudden stop. Only ten feet away from me, a black car parked, and the door opened.

Without thinking, I relaxed. My ghostly instincts kicked in and told me there was no need to run, no need to fear anything. Because if it drove a car, it couldn’t hurt me. It couldn’t even see me.

But, obviously, my instincts had forgotten the one exception to this rule, even if my heart hadn’t.

A boy climbed out of the driver’s side of the car and slammed the door shut. From his profile I could see he had full lips and a fine nose with just the slightest curve in it, as though it had been broken once but set well. He had curly blonde that was unkempt in the back, and large, dark blue eyes. When he cast those eyes on me, I absently mused that he was a much healthier colour than when I’d last seen him.

“You! It’s you!” he cried, pointing right at me.

Without another thought, I turned and ran.

*****&*****&*****

I was just full of foolish impulses lately. There he stood, the boy about whom I’d been thinking- obsessing, really- for the past two days. Yet I ran, as fast as I could, in the opposite direction. Had any of my adrenaline still existed, it would have burned in my legs as I fled.

Apparently, and as I’d suspected, my ghostly instincts had become as strong as my living ones had been. Ghosts weren’t meant to be seen, no matter how much they wanted to be. Anything to the contrary was cause enough to run away, and fast.

At least those would have been my thoughts were I capable of any. But at that moment I was only capable of blind terror. Fear buzzed in my brain, and it nearly blocked out the voice that rang out from behind me.

“Stop! Come on, stop! _Please!_ ”

It was the quality of the voice that did it- low, and still a little hoarse from the river water he’d swallowed. Hearing the break in it, I felt a little ache right in the middle of my chest. Just a small, inconspicuous, and completely incapacitating ache.

I skidded to a stop, almost at the other end of the bridge. Ever so slowly, I turned around to face him.

“Thanks,” he called out roughly, settling back on his heels. From his stance he looked as if he’d just been about to take off after me.

I gave him one tense nod. There was a noticeable pause, and then he asked, “So, will you come back here?”

I shook my head. _No way_.

Even this far apart I could hear him sigh.

“O-kay.” He dragged out the sound of the _O_ as if he was taking the seconds of the extra pronunciation to deal calmly with a frustrating puzzle. “Then...can I come over there to you?”

I frowned, not indicating an answer one way or another. I guess he took my indecision as a yes, because he began to walk toward me. He kept his steps intentionally slow, and he held his hands up in front of his body in the universal gesture of “I won’t hurt you, wild animal.”

“I come in peace,” he called out, and I could see him grin just a little. The grin was all at once wry, sweet, and cautious.

So I couldn’t help but grin back.

The boy dropped his hands and smiled fully at me, his cobalt eyes glinting in the sun’s glare. And with that, the little ache exploded in my chest like a bomb, warming every limb.

Warmth. I felt warmth. I really felt it, just like I’d felt the touch of his hand in the water. My smile widened.

“Does that smile mean I can keep walking toward you?”

“No,” I responded quietly.

He stopped moving, surprised by my words, or maybe just by the sound of my voice. “Really?” he asked after a moment.

“Walk over to the grass,” I instructed.

He frowned, knitting his dark eyebrows together. “Why?”

“I don’t like this road. I want to go back over there.” I jerked my head in the direction of the embankment I’d only recently left.

He kept frowning, but that grin twitched at the corners of his mouth again.

“O-kay.” He gave me a thoughtful look, holding my gaze. The message was clear: I was the frustrating puzzle which he was calmly dealing with.

Then he smiled, closed lipped and dimpled like a little boy, and gave me a quick nod. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans, turned on one heel, and began strolling back to the embankment.

Slowly. Too slowly. Swinging his legs in an exaggerated, deliberate way. I sighed loudly.

“Could you hurry up, please?”

He laughed, still walking away from me.

“You have a way with giving orders, you know that? Not a master of the casual chat, are you?”

_Given that you’re the first person I’ve talked to in God knows how long since my death..._

Aloud I muttered, “You have no idea.”

I could tell he’d heard me because he hesitated just a little. Then he kept walking forward, minus the mocking swing of his legs. After he’d gone about ten feet, I began to follow him. I walked even slower than he did, trying to think, think, _think_ of what I was going to do, or say, when he stopped.

Blessedly, he kept going, past his shiny back car, and past the bridge. Then onto the grass of the embankment. I was worrying so deeply about our upcoming exchange, I didn’t notice when he stopped and turned toward me. I looked up in time to jerk to a stop just a foot from him, within touching distance.

Terror raced through me. I could have run through him. If that had happened, I would have either felt him, skin against glorious skin, or I would have felt nothing but the numbing, impossible barrier. Either way, he surely would have realized something was wrong and do exactly what he should: get away from me.

“So,” he began, causally enough.

“So,” I responded, my eyes going to my feet. I felt ashamed, excited and terrified.

“I’m Pat.”

“I know.”

“I thought so.”

The humor in his voice made me look up, finally meeting his eyes. As I suspected, his eyes were very dark, but not black. They were strange, a deep blue akin to the midnight sky. I was certain I’d never seen eyes that colour before, and they had a disconcerting effect on me. I felt even more flustered just staring into them.

I was suddenly, uncomfortably aware of my own appearance: my hair that was probably standing up in every which direction, my deathly pale skin, my hopelessly inappropriate suit. For the first time in a very long time, I wished I had access to a mirror, whatever good it would do someone who couldn’t cast a reflection or change clothes.

He didn’t seem to notice my discomfort, however. Instead he looked right into my eyes and grinned at me, although his expression seemed to lose some of its previous amusement. He looked more speculative now, as if he knew there were mysteries between us. Questions.

“So,” he started again.

“You already said that.”

“Yeah I did. Thought I’d go for the double.” He laughed lightly and looked down at his shoes, absentmindedly running one hand through his curls and then leaving it on the back of his neck.

There went my little ache again, flowing out of my core like a pulse. That absentminded gesture- the guileless sweep of a hand through his hair- was utterly endearing. He looked so vibrant, so alive, that the words spilled right out of me.

“You want to know what happened, don’t you?”

I recoiled from my own words, blinking like an idiot. _Stupid, stupid, stupid._

“Yeah, I do. I really do.” He dropped the hand from his neck and stared at me more intently, the playfulness entirely gone from his eyes.

_Crap._

“Well that’s a matter of opinion...Patrick,” I said, testing out his name on my lips.

“Pat. Pat Kane,” he corrected instantaneously. “But my name’s not really important right now.”

Deflect. I had to deflect, and fast, so I blurted out the first question that came to mind.

“Why am I supposed to call you Pat if everyone else calls you Patrick?”

“You’re not everyone,” he said bluntly. “Anyway...”

He knew I was stalling and meant to lead me back to the original trail of conversation, that much was clear. What was less clear was whether or not he meant any flattery by his words.

“Uhm...,” I floundered, and did something I hadn’t done since my death; I fidgeted. I grabbed at my jacket and began to twist it. I had no idea where to go from here.

Neither did he, it seemed. He watched me worry at my jacket pocket and then he stared at my face until I eventually met his gaze.

“What’s your name?” His expression was soft, gentle. He wasn’t trying to lead me back to the conversation. He really wanted to know.

“Jon.”

“What’s your last name, Jon?” His voice wrapped so well around my name, I flustered out another stupid answer.

“I don’t know my last name.” Or, at least, I’d never felt brave enough to try to find it in the graveyard.

He blinked, taken aback.

“Huh. Where do you live?”

“I don’t know that, either.”

Disarmed. I was completely disarmed. That was the only reasonable explanation for my stupidity.

“O-kay.” The long _O_ again. He wasn’t as playful with the sound this time.

He stared down at his worn running shoes, frowning and digging the toe of one shoe into the grass. He shoved his hands back into his pockets and rolled his shoulders forward, a reflexive gesture that made him look boyish and sweet. After a few more silent moments, he looked up at me.

“You know, we have a lot to talk about.” His eyes, serious and urgent, met mine. My little ache curled out even farther in my chest as he continued. “I would have come and found you sooner, but they wouldn’t let me out of the hospital. Apparently my heart may have...Well, I may have...died, a little. In the water.”

He tilted his head to one side, clearly gauging my reaction. I shivered, but I didn’t look away. I probably didn’t look too surprised by his choice of words, either. After all, I was there when it happened. My face obviously answered some unasked question of his, because he nodded again.

“So,” he went on, “after I got out the hospital, I started asking about you. But nobody saw you that night. Not my family, not my friends, not even the paramedics. Nobody saw you on the shore, but nobody saw you in the water with me. Which I find weird. Because you _were_ in the water with me, weren’t you?”

I bit my lower lip and nodded slightly.

“I knew I didn’t imagine you. Well, maybe when I was, y’know, _dead_.” He said the words as if he was afraid of it. “But not after. Not when I swam to the surface or when I made it out of the water.”

Still biting my lip, I shook my head. _No. You didn’t imagine me. You_ saw _me_.

“I practically had to steal my dad’s car to get out of the house today, and I came right here- to the scene of the crime. And here you are.”

“Yes,” I whispered, totally lost for a clever response. “Here I am.”

“So,” he whispered back, “we have a lot to talk about.”

“You already said that.”

He laughed, and the sound surprised us both. Then he nodded decisively.

“Well, here’s how I see it, Jon. We don’t have to talk now. I have to get the car back to my dad soon anyway, since I’ve spent the whole morning stalking you. Besides, this doesn’t seem like a conversation you want to have, especially in this place. Can’t say that I blame you.” He glanced quickly glanced at the hole in the railing, shuddered, and then looked back into my eyes. “So, tomorrow I’m going to be at Robber’s Cave Park. Do you know where that is?”

Stunningly, impossibly, I nodded yes.

I knew the park. I suddenly knew it as well as I knew my first name, and I knew the direction of where I stood now. I knew it from memory, a genuine one that hadn’t flashed into and out of my mind but just...was.

What was he doing to me?

“Okay, good. I’m going to sit at the emptiest park bench I can find. I’m going to be there at noon, because, unfortunately, I’m healthy enough to go back to school tomorrow. I think I can talk my parents into letting me skip third period- play the sympathy card with them- but noon’s the earliest I can get there. So I’m going to go to the park. And I’m going to wait for you.”

“And if I don’t show?”

He shrugged. “I’ll respect your privacy. Or I’ll pursue you all over the earth like I’ve been trying to do since they let me out of the hospital. Probably the latter.”

I should have been afraid. I should have run away again, hid until the years passed and Pat became an old man and the fog wrapped around my dead brain again.

Instead, I smiled.

He gave me a slight nod, grinned, and walked past me back to his car.

“Till tomorrow,” he called out with one small, backward glance.

I watched him walk away, once more unsure of everything. But when he opened his car door, my incapacitating ache curled again. My impulses, it seemed, were still doing unfamiliar things to me, because the ache seemed to have incapacitated everything but my big mouth.

“Pat?” I called out, a slight hitch in my voice.

“Yeah?” He spun around immediately. I could swear he looked expectant, maybe even eager.

“What do I look like to you?”

He tilted his head to the side, frowning.

“What do I look like to you?” I repeated urgently, afraid that if I didn’t talk fast enough, I would have time to realize how absolutely, mind-bogglingly stupid I sounded.

Pat smiled. He answered me, so quietly I almost couldn’t hear him.

“Beautiful. Too beautiful for people to not have noticed you the other night.”

“Oh.” The little sound was all I could manage.

He stood up straight then and cleared his throat. “So...uhm...I’m going to leave before I say anything else that makes me sound like a complete idiot. Tomorrow?”

I nodded, stunned. “Tomorrow.”

Pat, too, nodded. Then he got into his car and reversed it back off the bridge, giving wide berth to the gap in the railing. With one quick, final spin, the car pulled away, disappearing from sight around a curve.

*****&*****&*****

Hours can pass like years when you wait impatiently for something, especially something you crave and dread in equal measure.

What I craved, in a manner so intensely I nearly ached from it, was to see Pat’s face and to hear his voice. Wandering and dreaming of him, I’d never imagined Pat would be able to see me and talk to me again, much less that he would want to. I hadn’t anticipated how much I would want it too. How much my longing to be seen, and specifically by him, would intensify each time I was.

But seeing him again meant telling him the truth.

Sitting on the riverbank after Pat left, I felt certain I wouldn’t be able to lie to him the next day. Not if my completely ridiculous behaviour on the bridge proved any indication of my ability to deceive him. If I saw him in the park, and we spoke, I would undoubtedly tell him everything: what I’d seen under the water, and what I really was. Which, in turn, would undoubtedly drive him away from me.

So even if I went to the park, I probably wouldn’t see him again afterward. Presuming this, I had to ask myself what would hurt worse: the numb loneliness of invisibility or the aching loneliness of an outright rejection from the living world. I knew the awful boundaries and depths of the former, but I had no idea how excruciating the latter could, and likely would, be.

Following this line of reasoning, I came to a decision about my course of action the next day. I wouldn’t go. I would hide. I would protect my dead heart from anything worse than numbness.

And I would probably feel miserable about it for years. I lay my arms across my knees in a posture of defeat.

And felt the wispy, lightheaded feeling of the nightmares returning. My self-pity welcoming them with open arms, any mental pain to distract myself from the physical pain of the real world.

*****&*****&*****

Another nightmare wreaked havoc over my body and mind the night before. I willed my body to relax and then stretched each limb in turn. The effort was needless, since my dead muscles hardly had any reason to cramp, even when held in one position for many hours. Still, the gesture seemed appropriate. I wanted to feel my new resolve in my body as well as my mind; my resolve to never allow my nightmares to control me again.

This resolve felt important; essential even, because I knew that I was not finished with my nightmares. I couldn’t promise myself that I wouldn’t be waiting, dreading the return of my nightmares. But I refused to stay by this river anymore. Because I didn’t want to let fear keep imprisoning me.

And because it was almost noon, judging by the position of the sun.

Yesterday I’d decided not to meet Pat again. I had every intention of hiding, and letting the confusion take me back. After the nightmare’s sudden appearance, however, I had no intention of ever letting myself willing surrender to my worst fears. I intended to stay as awake and alive as possible.

And Pat made me feel very much alive. He was the reason behind all of this change, this newness. The reason I’d woken up from the fog.

I couldn’t explain it, any more than I could explain why I’d wandered lost after death, or why I didn’t now. But the new desires that had filled me after Pat’s accident hadn’t changed. They’d grown stronger, more acute. Even more than the first moment I saw him, I wanted to be near him. I wanted to feel him, maybe, just once more. Anything, even the sight of him running away from me when he learned the truth, would be worth the risk.

Now I sensed a new purpose to this day. I stared at the river and its bank one more time, drinking in the image of the green water and the summer-yellowed grass. This was the scene of so many of my changes: life to death…and maybe back to a sort of life again? Maybe. It was worth trying to find out.

“See ya,” I said aloud to the water, one final time.

And I began to run, bare feet flying across mud and grass, and then pavement, leaving the river and the bridge far behind me.

*****&*****&*****

I reached the park with only a little time to spare. A clock sitting atop a large wooden platform outside the park entrance read 11:50.

I slowed my pace until I was almost strolling up the cedar-lined road that led to the picnic area. Although I’d run for miles, I wasn’t winded or even ruffled. Still, I began to fidget, smoothing invisible wrinkles from my suit and running my hands through the spiky ends of my crew cut. I felt…jittery. I guess a case of nerves could survive even death.

I nearly turned back, my previous resolve shrinking. My future hinged on Pat and the outcome of our conversation. I felt this in my core, and I suddenly couldn’t fathom how I’d decided to face him with such bravado.

But my feet were traitors. Or more loyal, depending on one’s perspective. They kept marching me down the road, through a parking lot and a thin grove of pines, past a cluster of empty benches, and to the only occupied one.

Pat sat, not on the bench but on the concrete table to which the bench was attached. He stared to his left, into the woods surrounding the picnic clearing. His profile -square jaw, high cheekbones, and full lips- made me shiver as a wave of desire and fear washed over me. I watched his thick blonde eyebrows pull together while he continued to study the forest. Perhaps he was thinking I had, in fact, stood him up.

“Hey, Pat.”

Although I’d all but whispered, his head jerked toward me. Then a huge, radiant smile spread across his face. He jumped off the table and strode toward me, one arm lifted as if he intended to touch me.

Instinctively, I took a quick step back.

He stopped and frowned.

“Uh…sorry. Too enthusiastic?”

_God, no. I just wasn’t ready for this to end before it starts._

“No,” I said aloud. “Just…unexpected.”

He laughed. “Sorry. I probably look like a golden retriever or something. Big, dumb dog. But this was a little unexpected too, y’know?”

“How so?”

“You showed up. Unexpectedly.” He half smiled, and the ghost of a dimple tugged at his cheek.

I found myself smiling back a little too. “I aim to please.”

“Then mission accomplished.”

“Oh.”

_Brilliant, Jon,_ I screamed in my head. Death had obviously not improved my vocabulary. Pat’s half smile crept a little farther upward, possibly a sign of his amusement at the flustered look on my face.

Unfortunately, our banter wasn’t going to last forever. He swept one hand back to the table like a maître d’. “A quiet park bench, as promised?”

I sighed. No putting this off any longer, so it seemed. “Yeah, I guess it’s time.”

Pat’s eyebrows knitted together as I strode past him to the bench.

“Look,” he started. “I’m not going to conduct the Spanish Inquisition or anything.”

“I know,” I responded flatly.

I sat down, feeling the pressure of the bench but not really the bench itself, and folded my hands in my lap. Pat turned toward me but made no move to sit. I stared down at my lap and tried to ready myself for the inevitable ending. But there was something I needed to know first.

“Before we get into explanations, can I ask you a question?”

“Anything.”

I looked up to see him shove his hands into the pockets of his jeans and tilt his head to one side. Judging by his stance, he was probably more than a little bewildered by my behaviour, so I asked my question carefully.

“Did you…intentionally drive off the bridge?”

“Ha.” He barked out a laugh. “Not exactly.”

It was odd, but I thought he almost sounded embarrassed. I too tilted my head and raised one eyebrow, encouraging him to continue. He laughed again, a little sheepishly, and a flattering blush spread across his cheekbones.

“The only thing I did intentionally was take a stupid shortcut.”

I kept my eyebrow raised, so Pat continued.

“I was following a bunch of my friends to a party. For some crazy reason I decided to take a shortcut across Memorial Bridge Road by myself. I have no idea why I did. My family practically forbids me to drive over the bridge since it’s such a death trap. Anyway, right before I crossed on to Memorial Bridge, I thought I saw something in the river. I was distracted; and when I looked back at the road, I saw something dart out at me- a deer or a bobcat maybe; it looked so black, I couldn’t be sure. I swerved to miss it and then my car spun out across the bridge. I must have hit my head on the steering wheel, because I really don’t remember any part of the crash after that. Thank God I’d rolled down the windows. I guess that’s how I got out of the car before I sank with it.”

“And your friends got there so fast because…?”

He gave an embarrassed shrug. “Because I…um…had the beer in my car.”

As he finished, I exhaled slowly. I was grateful that at least one of my theories behind our interaction was wrong: suicide wasn’t our commonality; it was only our mutual deaths, however brief his had been.

“Would it be weird, Pat, if I said I’m glad?”

“Why, because I like beer?”

I smiled slightly. “No, because you didn’t mean to drive off the bridge.”

He laughed. “Then that’s not weird at all. I wouldn’t exactly _choose_ Memorial Bridge for my exit scene, y’know?”

I gasped.

Seeing my strange reaction, he spoke quickly, almost apologetically. “Sorry. I’m…Look, I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m not trying to upset you or anything. I guess…I mean…you really don’t have to do this. To tell me anything, that is.

“But I do,” I said, unable to keep the misery out of my voice. “I don’t really think I have a choice, if I ever want to talk to you again. If you’ll even want to talk to me, afterward.”

“Why wouldn’t I want to talk to you?”

His gentle tone, and the implication in his words, make me meet his gaze. With his strange blue eyes locked on mine, I felt the little ache ignite again in my chest.

“You won’t want to talk to me because I’m going to tell you the truth.”

“And the truth will make me…what? Decide to shun you?” He grinned and raised one eyebrow, obviously skeptical.

“Something like that,” I murmured.

“I find that hard to believe,” he said as he momentarily broke our eye contact to walk over to the bench and finally sit beside me.

“Actually, you’re probably going to find what I’m about to tell you hard to believe. But it’s the truth.”

He clasped his hands and leaned closer to me, placing his elbows on his knees before raising his eyes back to mine.

“Good. I want to hear the truth, Jon.”

Inexplicably, my breath quickened. A pulse, one I knew I didn’t have, began to race through my arms and along my neck. I could swear I felt heat from the nearness of his body, heat that threatened to turn into a blush on my unblushable cheeks. The kind of heat that could make me do or say just about anything. Words started to fall from my mouth almost before I thought of them.

“You said you saw me under the water, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re the only person who saw me at all?”

“Yes.” He kept his voice patient, calm. My voice, however, trembled as I continued.

“Well, I think you saw me because…well, because you were dead.”

He frowned again. “I know I was dead, at least for a few seconds. But I’m not sure I’m following you.”

“You couldn’t see me at first, right? Not before you…died.”

The more I spoke, the less I could breathe. Pat seemed to be struggling too with where I was heading. He responded slowly, methodically, as if he needed to hold tightly to reason in this conversation.

“Jon, I couldn’t see you because I was unconscious before my heart stopped.”

“No. Well, you _were_ unconscious. But that’s not the only reason you couldn’t see me. Even if you were conscious, you still wouldn’t have been able to see me. Not yet anyway.”

“Huh?” His frown deepened, and he leaned away from me.

Suddenly, I couldn’t stop the flow of my words. It was like pulling a piece of thick tape from my mouth. I wanted to rip it off, tear through my explanation, so I could breathe again.

“I have a theory, sort of. I can’t be sure, but I think I can be seen unless someone is, well, _like_ me. That’s why the people on the shore couldn’t see me.”

I was in such a hurry to get the truth out that I’d lost control of the things tumbling from my mouth. “Sorry,” I sighed. I dropped my head into my hands and squeezed my eyes tightly shut. “I’m not making any sense, am I?”

Pat’s response surprised me. He didn’t sound frustrated, or even confused. Instead, his voice was hushed, intense.

“Jon, I’m trying very hard to understand this. I know something…strange has happened. Is happening. I’ll believe your explanation. Just go slow, okay?”

My eyes flew open and met his. His eyes were lovely, and serious; they reminded me of the bright sky just after sunrise. I tried to shake the distraction of them from my head so I could focus on this horrible conversation.

“Pat, I have no idea how to say this.”

“It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”

I turned away from him, staring at but not really seeing the patch of red dirt in front of us. When I spoke again, I did so slowly. Painfully.

“I think you saw me, and you can still see me, because we have some sort of, I don’t know, magical or spiritual connection. You’re _like_ me. Or you were, at least for a moment.”

Pat’s eyes narrowed. “And by ‘like you’ you mean…?”

“That you died.”

The word ‘died’ hung heavy in the air between us, like an ax waiting to drop.

Pat’s forehead wrinkled as he tried to make sense out of my words, tried to follow the convoluted path I’d laid. He may not have connected all of the pieces yet, but he would. As each second passed, I could see it happening, piece by piece. He would rip off the bandage at any moment, would either call me a lunatic or-worse- believe me.

“Okay, he started haltingly. “You and I have both died? Me in the river, and you sometime in the past?”

“Yes. In the same river, actually.”

“Wow.” He blinked in surprise but then composed himself again. “So you’re saying this ‘connection’ is the reason I was the only one who could see you? Some sort of magic, or something?” He said the last words uncertainly, as though he were trying out a strange new language.

“I think so.” I bent my head down toward my lap again.

“And the connection exists because you died?”

I only nodded.

“And you came back to life, like me?”

A heartbeat or two passed, and then-

“No, Pat. Not that part.”

For a while there was only silence. Then I heard him suck in a sharp breath. Here it was, the moment. The finale. I finished it off with nothing but a whisper.

“You see, Pat, I never did come back to life.”

At the worst possible moment, I had one of those new, unpredictable sensations. I could suddenly feel the warm breeze against the skin of my legs and arms. The air felt charged, electric, like the gray sky would tear open and let thunder and lightning and all hell break loose around us. Goose bumps erupted on my arms. Real goose bumps- that I once experienced when I was alive.

I couldn’t look up at Pat’s face, but I could hear him stammering, making incredulous little noises. Then he became very quiet and still. This stillness lasted for possibly a full minute before he spoke with an unnatural calm.

“Jon, are you trying to tell me you’re…?”

“Dead.” I spoke immediately. It felt wrong to prolong the inevitable any longer.

“Dead.” He repeated the word without any inflection.

Another heartbeat passed and then, unexpectedly, Pat jumped off of the bench. He spun around to face me. I stared up at him, undoubtedly wild-eyed and frantic. His face, however, was expressionless. He wore a sort of mask- hiding terror, anger, disbelief, hatred? I had no idea.

I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand the frozen look on his face, the look I’d put there with the truth. He thought I was crazy, or he knew I was dead. Whichever conclusion he’d made, I would certainly lose him, however little I’d had him.

In this moment I felt impossibly and utterly alone. Alone for eternity probably, and now painfully aware of what I would be missing.

“I’m sorry,” I whimpered- apologizing to him, to myself, to whomever would listen- and clasped a hand over my mouth.

I was so lost in sorrow for myself, I almost didn’t notice it: something on my cheek. Something warm and wet, trailing it’s way to the corner of my lips. Without taking my eyes from his empty face, I touched one finger to the edge of my eye. I pressed the fingertip to my lips. It tasted salty.

A tear. My dead eyes had shed a tear.

Something about that single tear must have stirred Pat, because his frozen expression suddenly melted. His eyes and mouth softened.

“Jon.” His voice was rough, and it broke. My name had never sounded so beautiful.

Pat reached out to me, moving his hand as if to cup it around my cheek. Without giving a though to anything but the ache that raged inside me, I leaned into his gesture.

And as my world had changed the first time he laid his hand upon my cheek, looking into his eyes, I knew it would change again. For the better.  



End file.
